Businesses today that use commercial web sites to convey information have an interest in tracking statistics regarding visitor activity. Commercial web sites today often aim to track usage as measured by the number of users viewing specific pieces of content.
In order to track usage, mining data out of web logs on a web server is not a viable solution. The act of logging every single interaction on a web site would be cost prohibitive and slow down web site performance. Furthermore, such a technique would provide more information than necessary. Businesses typically are not interested in recording every user action on a web site and are generally satisfied with a count of user visits through each link.
Typically, commercial web sites implement tracking servers to track URL usage from a partner server having one or more links to the commercial web site. Generally, tracking information is encoded into a URL. The tracking information may include such information as the data link selected from the partner web site to initiate the content request and the rendered content page from which the content request originated. Software in the tracking server logs information and redirects the user browser to the location of the link that the user wanted to reach. When a user clicks on a link in a partner web site, after tracking, the user receives a completely random looking string of numbers and letters that has no relevance to the user's selected destination
For example, services are available through which participating web sites can each set up their own namespace on a tracking server, complete with all the URLs to which they expect their users to be redirected, and then begin using URLs that point to a single address.
While tracking servers may be able to keep an accurate count, the current technique for using tracking servers creates several implementation difficulties. First, if the tracking server is down or otherwise inaccessible, all the links on the web site being tracked will become unusable even though the web site being tracked is healthy. Even if the user selects a link to a different page on the same web site he is currently visiting, if the tracking server is not operating properly, the user will be unable to access the page. If something blocks the user from getting to the tracking server such as network latency or network outage, the user will be unable to visit the location referenced by the target URL. The web site operator will probably be unaware of the outage unless users call product support.
Secondly, after tracking, all of the links will have lost their context. In other words, a URL that used to point to “http://entertainment.msn.com/movies” may now point to “http://g.msn.com/ent.345/?ps=123&cm=321&ce=5”. The tracking URL is typically a nonsensical combination of letters and/or numbers that provides no contextual information about the destination and bears little relation to the target URL content, thus causing confusion to the user. If this resultant tracking link is copied and saved or sent to a friend, it is not possible to infer what property this link accesses. In addition to user confusion, the tracking URL has little meaning to search index systems that also rely on URL content for indexing. If a web site is indexed by a web search index system such as Google, the algorithms of the web search index system apply weight to context that can be inferred from a URL. Accordingly, if ten external partner web sites point to one page on a target web site and all of the external web sites have information in the URL that allows the heuristics of the web search index system to determine context, then that one page that has those ten links referencing it is going to rank much higher in search results than other pages. For instance if user implements a browser to search for Barry Manilow, a web site operator having a page pertaining to Barry Manilow would want the user to be able to access the page. Accordingly, the web site owner would want his or her Barry Manilow page to be referenced by a URL that will promote high-ranking search results. Because of the emphasis that many contemporary search algorithms apply to the URL of a given page being indexed, it has become increasingly important to provide clues as to the content of a web page within its destination URL.
A further implementation difficulty with existing tracking servers includes the necessity for registering each URL with the tracking server. Each web site that uses a tracking server for tracking often must pre-disclose or register URLs in a namespace on the tracking server.
A solution is needed that allows contextually relevant URLs to be maintained during tracking procedures to enable web sites to participate fully in web search engines and to enable users to discern target web site content from the URL. A solution is additionally needed for allowing user link usage even when a tracking server outage has occurred. Furthermore, a solution is needed that eliminates any existing requirement to pre-disclose or register each URL with a tracking server.